ART 418 · Charleston Southern University · Fall 2026
The Business of Design
3 credits · Prerequisite ART 318 · Abe Garcia
The Business of Design
ART 418 · Charleston Southern University · Fall 2026 · Three credits. Prerequisite: ART 318. Meets weekly, August 24 through December 7, with a final meeting in exam week.
Design is the oldest business there is: the shaping of meaning for people, at a price. This course reads the profession's history as the history of human thought — tools, language, consciousness, commerce — from the Gutenberg Bible to the language machine, and asks at every stop the same two questions. What did designers believe? And what did they sell?
The setting is part of the syllabus. At a Christian university, the survey's recurring argument between faith and secular utopia — Chesterton against Russell, Morris against the machine, Wiener's late worry about gadget worship — is not a detour from the business of design. It is the business of design, stated at full length.
Why this course, now
The market you are graduating into has changed shape. The entry-level rung of production work is largely gone; what remains scarce is judgment — taste, provenance, and the ability to say why a thing should exist and what it should cost. That is a liberal-arts problem with a ledger attached, and this course is built accordingly: every week pairs an idea with its business model.
How the course works
Fourteen sessions, in order, from movable type to the model that moves the type itself. The readings live on this platform; your weekly writing is done in its margins. A session has three parts: the era and what it believed, the reading, and the business thread — who paid, what was sold, and what the price argued.
The work
The commonplace book, thirty percent. Weekly annotations on the assigned texts, kept here in the margin. Graded on judgment, not volume.
The position paper, twenty percent, at midterm. What is design for? Argued from the course's sources; the whole Chesterton-to-Russell spectrum is welcome.
The hundred-dollar artifact, thirty percent. Design, price, and actually offer one real thing — a print, a zine, a typeface, a service — and document the ledger. Revenue is evidence, not the grade; the argument for the price is.
The defense, twenty percent, in exam week. Ten minutes on your intended practice, its positioning, and its price list, defended against questions.
Policies
Academic integrity follows university policy, including the explicit statement of permissible AI use that accompanies every assignment. This course's stance is consistent with its subject: the machine is a tool under study — use it, cite it, and be prepared to argue what your judgment added. Attendance, accessibility, and accommodations follow the university's published policies; grades of record live in Blackboard.
The work
| Assignment | Due | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Gate 1: research and direction The research behind the venture, the moodboards, and the brand themes it could live in. Presented to the room. | Sep 30 | 15% |
| Gate 2: the brand The brand itself, built. The midterm showcase, and the largest presentation of the term. | Oct 14 | 25% |
| Gate 3: the system, specified The brand rewritten as a system: the rules, tokens and instructions a machine can operate without you in the room. | Nov 11 | 20% |
| Gate 4: the system, running The brand actually operated by AI against the spec, demonstrated live, with what it got right and what it got wrong. | Dec 2 | 20% |
| Presentations Every gate is presented. Marked across the four, not one at a time. | Exam week | 10% |
| Participation Seminar discussion, critique, and use of the work sessions. | Exam week | 10% |
| Total | 100% |
The rules
- Readings
- Books are read in selections, never whole: what is assigned is the part of it this week needs, named on the session it is read for. A reading listed on a session is read before that class, and it is handed out at the meeting before.
- AI use
- To be written. The machine is the production method this course studies, so its use will be declared rather than hidden, but the rules have not been set. This has to be settled before the project is announced on August 31.
- Accessibility
- Charleston Southern University will provide reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities to make all learning experiences accessible. If you feel you may need accommodations based on the impact of a disability, please contact the Office of Accessibility Services located in The Hub (2nd floor of the library; 843-863-7159, awatson@csuniv.edu) to initiate a conversation about your options. Accommodations are not retroactive, so please avoid delays.
- Attendance
- Attendance is tracked. University policy R-10 sets failure for absences at a quarter of the meetings, which in this course is seven.
- Grades of record
- Blackboard is the university's system of record. This site carries the readings, the media shelf, and your margin notes; grades live there.